City streets were littered with downed tree branches during last winter's ice storm. Injuries to city workers soared in the first three months of the year, but only one of those injuries was blamed on the ice storm.

From a firefighter’s broken leg to a childcare worker’s shattered elbow, last winter took a heavy toll on the bodies of Toronto city workers.

But no department was hit as disproportionately hard by the weather over the previous year as the city’s parks, forestry and recreation staff.

That’s according to a new report showing city staff suffered 247 workplace injuries requiring time off work in the first three months of 2014, a 27-per-cent spike over the same period last year.

Eleven of those workplace injuries were critical, with most involving a broken arm or leg and one involving a heart attack. None were fatal.

Forestry spokesman Dean Hart said the only injury attributable to the ice storm that he could recall was a forestry worker who had jumped a fence to retrieve a fallen branch from someone’s backyard.

“They jumped off the fence and twisted their ankle because they couldn’t see exactly what they were landing on,” Hart said.

City workers also reported twice as many flare-ups of recurring injuries requiring time off and 153-per-cent more falls due to icy conditions, according to the staff report presented to the city’s employee and labour relations committee Friday.

Staff injuries that did not require more than a day off also rose from 247 in the first quarter of 2013 to 270 this year, an increase of 9 per cent.

Across the board, the city reported 556 staff injuries from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2014, a 21-per-cent jump from the 461 injuries reported during the same time last year.

While parks and recreation staff saw their lost-time injuries jump from 23 cases in 2013 to 34 this year, the department was only the second-most injury prone in 2014.

The city’s emergency medical services staff again reported the highest quarterly injuries of any department, despite a consistent decline in workplace injuries since 2010.

“Patients may lash out a bit, not because they’re trying to hurt someone but because they’re in distress so sometimes we have injuries from that,” said Toronto EMS spokesperson Kim McKinnon.

More often, ambulance attendants and paramedics suffer from lift-related strains while transporting patients.

“You’re twisting your body in funny ways many times a day,” McMinnon said. “But we had a bit of a drop in those musculoskeletal injuries and we had a slight increase in slips and falls, which would be ice storm-related.”

Even with the increase in injuries over last year, the city was a safer place to work this winter than in all of the four years past. Since 2010, staff has seen a 40-per-cent drop in lost-time injuries and a 57-per-cent drop in recurring injuries.

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